That night, as he was allowing Clove to sleep for the first couple of hours before she was due to take over; Peeta watched her battle with her own demons for the first time.

It was a relatively calm night outside of their small cave, and the miniature storm which the gamemakers had conjured up on their way home from the fruitful "hunting" had blown over. The damp earth smelled of petrichor, a smell that Peeta had always found comforting. All in all, it looked as if it was going to be a calm night.

That is, until Clove finally fell right into a nightmare that left her whimpering and with tears streaming down her face, leaving Peeta feeling uneasy.

The whole day had left him feeling uneasy, if he was going to be frank about it. Sure, it wasn´t the first time he had seen someone die by unnatural causes, but it was the first time Clove make a kill as his ally. A part of him had also imagined that it had all been an act, the way she was with the rest of the careers. That they urged each other on, making them appear differently.

Surely, someone as tiny as Clove couldn´t be that vicious, or that bloodthirsty. Unfortunately for him –or fortunately, in a way- that had turned out to be the real Clove, and not just some wicked version of her. It had left him feeling oddly disappointed for some reason as he had always been a firm believer that in people who were like that usually had a reason to be like that.

But Peeta didn´t know her well enough to answer the question of whether she was a psychopath or just misunderstood. Either way, he knew that she was a force to be reckoned with. And a deadly one at that.

The walk back to their cave from the woods had been strained and Clove had seemed exhausted. Peeta had offered to take the first shift and she had just nodded, no other words needed. At the time, he had figured it would be an opportunity to think things through and come to terms about what he wanted to do and how he was about to survive.

He wasn´t naïve enough to believe that he could survive a second out there in the woods alone without an ally. Even now when there were only five people left in the games –they had shown the girl with the red hairs picture in the sky earlier that night- and all of them had higher points than him. For some reason, outside of the ones he had already mentioned, he didn´t like the idea of leaving Clove. Saving someone from death had made him form a bond with her, and as peculiar as it seemed, he didn´t want her to get hurt as well.

Deciding to throw caution out of the wind because he really did not like Clove looking like that, he shuffled closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder, fully prepared to wake her up. Instead of it having the effect he wanted, which was waking her up and snapping her out of it, her sobs grew rapidly in speed and in sound.

"Clove," He whispered, shaking her and hoping that no one outside of their cave had heard.

"Don't hurt me, please. I promise to be good. I promise." Peeta looked at her pale face, his stomach in knots.

"I´m not going to-"

"Don't hurt me."

He had just realized that she was still asleep when she let out an ear piercing scream and woke up at the sound, looking like she had just broken the surface of water and could finally breathe.

Then she did the unthinkable, she started to cry.

Not the soft, muffled kind of crying that he would have expected, but the full on; I am having a breakdown right now, kind of crying.

And then, just he was sure the night could not get any weirder, he surprised himself by putting his arms around her, pressing her tiny form against his chest.

"I didn´t mean to kill him," He heard her say, the voice faint and muffled by his shirt. He didn´t believe the cameras or whatever the gamemakers used could pick up on it. "But he was going to kill me. I had to."

"I know." He whispered, his face in Clove´s raven hair. "It's going to be alright."

Peeta wasn´t sure how long they sat like that; him whispering sweet nothings into her hair, and Clove crying, but eventually she stopped and fell asleep, taking him with her.

He noted though, when he woke up in the cave, dawn breaking outside, that she hadn´t had any more nightmares. For some reason, he felt calm and happy for the first time since he had entered the arena.

A smile spread across his face.

To be honest, I´m not sure if I am going to end this fanfiction with that note. In a way, it seems almost perfect, but on the other hand I have so much planned, like Clove meeting Cato again, etc, etc.

-What do you think? Should I end it with an open ending?-